Istanbul Airport (ICAO: LTFM, IATA: IST) is the new main international airport of the city of Istanbul. It has been in operation since 2018 and ranks 1st among airports in Turkey. Istanbul Airport is located on an area of 76.5 million square meters and is intended to be a global hub between the continents of Asia, Africa and Europe. The airport is located northwest of Istanbul on the Black Sea, approx. 40 km from the city center.
Stairport and SceneryTR got everything out of X-Plane for this project, so of course all airport buildings were implemented and textures with PBR were used. Animated jetways, VDGS, own animated airport vehicles and much more were installed on the airport area. Compatibility with other add-ons such as Ortho4XP was also ensured. Since the airport is not available in X-Plane by default, we have also included the appropriate AIRAC data.
Features:
Highly detailed virtual replica of the airport buildings and its surroundings
Photorealistic textures on airport buildings and vehicles
Custom high resolution ground textures, detailed markings and full PBR
Custom 3D Taxiway signs
Animated jetways, VDGS and marshaller (SAM Plugin required)
Custom surroundings with hand placed autogen and water
Realistic static aircrafts included
Custom road layout
Seasonal texture adaptions (SAM Plugin required)
Compatible with Ortho4XP
Navdata AIRAC 2104 included
Note Nav data: In order for the newer nav data to be recognized by X-Plane, the “Custom Data” folder in the “Custom Scenery / SceneryTR - LTFM Istanbul - 01 - Airport / NAVDATA_AIRAC_2104” folder must be copied into the X-Plane main directory. If newer Nav data are already installed, this step is not necessary.
Requirements
X-Plane 11.41+
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 10 (64bit), Linux Ubuntu LTS or macOS (Mojave+)
Processor: Dual-Core CPU with 3.0 GHz
Memory: 12 GB RAM
Graphics card: 4 GB, DirectX 11
Free disk space: 5 GB
Really nice building models and textures. Ground textures for the airport are fantastic! One detail to improve on would be fences around the airport are missing, no fences in the cargo area to seperate the apron from the parking areas. I always find this is a things devs miss out on, its not a huge error, but can break the immersion a little.
€30 is a high price tag, and whilst I know this is a conversion by Stairport from a P3D scenery, for the price It would of been great to include Istanbul city.
(Bought on another store)
I fly a lot to LTFM, so I decided to buy this anyway, even though there is a great freeware version available.
My verdict is pretty simple, this is not a bad scenery at all. Actually, it is pretty good, but is is it 30€ good? No, not if you consider the freeware that is available. Personally, I find 30€ quite a steep price even if you do not count the freeware version being available, but okay big airport and all that. Still, I would’ve expected a bit of ortho or mesh of the airport surroundings or a bit of Istanbul landmarks for that price but no.
The airport itself has lovely detail, it is certainly an upgrade over the freeware but it is too much for what you get. I fly to LTFM all the time so for me it’s worth it but for people who don’t have as much money to spend or don’t fly to LTFM very much, I would suggest holding off on buying this. I hope to see some mesh or ortho for Istanbul itself but I doubt it will come. Bit of a shame since a lot of other Aerosoft airports do have this but this one not.
I had hoped to see that with the added competition this would be an amazing airport like OMDB by Aviotek who tried to match the FlyTampa equivalent in P3D but I’m a bit disappointed myself.